Publication Integrity & Ethics (PIE) was developed over a decade ago to address several areas of concern and promote real editorial freedom.Read more.
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Duties
All the individuals involved in the editorial process have the duty to promote and preserve the ethical code of conduct and a healthy publishing environment. The publisher is ultimately responsible for the ethical conduct of their staff and the opportunity to maintain the standards of best practice. The editors-in-chief appoint the editorial team, delegate duties and determine the main organisational purpose.
1. Duties of the publishers
- Define the mission of the journal they manage.
- Determine the budget and adapt it to the line and style of the journal.
- Select and hire the editorial staff.
- Oversee the editorial content.
- Supervise the production of the journal.
- Publishers represent the publication they manage, in relationship with the readers, authors, editors, reviewers and other individuals and organisations.
2. Duties of the editors-in-chief and senior editors
- Assume the editing responsibilities and oversee the whole editorial process.
- Ensure the authenticity, quality, language and aesthetics of the content being published.
- Approve or reject submitted materials based on objectivity, quality and informative character.
- Ensure the authenticity of the media released for the public.
- Deal with complaints against them, their journals or members of the editorial staff.
- Protect their journals against acts of misconduct and plagiarism.
- Communicate with each author whether or not they reject or accept the articles or news provided.
- Cross check the articles and other editorial materials.
- Undertake light and heavy edits to the content.
- Manage the entire editorial process.
- Comply with the Code of conduct and the PIE guidelines and advise the editorial staff to adhere to PIE as well.
- Set and implement the ethical standards.
- Handle complaints received from the readers.
3. Duties of the editorial board members and peer-reviewers
- Evaluate the technical and historical accuracy of the written texts, the writing style and the grammatical correctness of the articles.
- Assess whether an article suits the style and the orientation of the publication.
- Assess who will be interested in reading the text and why, whether the main claims of the author were appropriately discussed and if the context was real.
- Identify plagiarism, ghost authorship and other issues that may arise.
- Analyse the possibility of improving the text and if it is the case, how difficult it is to do so and how long it will take
- Inform the editor-in-chief or senior editor of the publication about possible conflicts of interests.
- Address issues related to the editorial work.
4. Duties of the authors
- Write content that readers can relate to and easily understand, cope with criticism, collaborate with peers and readers in order to improve their writing style.
- Keep the reader interested and focused on the subjects they write about. Their texts must therefore be plausible to the reader.
- Conduct research and analyse the topic from multiple points of view, linking the text with other fields of knowledge if necessary.
- Do their best to captivate reader attention and challenge the reader to think further on the topic.
- The language and the writing style used by the authors are vital for the effectiveness of the content being published. They should ensure their work is technically and grammatically sound.
- Consequently, authors should work on developing and improving their technical skills of writing as well as the general knowledge of the subject being debated.
- Ensure their work is original and if there are references to other works, they are highlighted according to the editorial standards.
- Comply with the organisational rules and deadlines.
- Encourage active and critical feedback from readers and peers.
